


She's Your Sister

by lloronadeazulceleste



Series: When You Were Young [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Modern AU, and she'd kill ozai if she had the chance, mai cares about those two siblings more than she'd like, maiko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 01:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21485734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lloronadeazulceleste/pseuds/lloronadeazulceleste
Summary: When everything fails, Mai goes to Zuko.
Relationships: Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: When You Were Young [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540195
Kudos: 51





	She's Your Sister

“Azula’s home alone. I-“ she stops and wets her lips. This is harder than she thought.

“What is it?” he asks, and his hands give her the support she needed. “Mai, Azula can take care of herself. She isn’t a little girl.” His smile was gentle, soft like his eager hands bringing her close to him. “You can stay a little longer.”

_Oh, to lose herself to the taste of his lips, to the touch of his hands on her waist! _Her breath hitches, and slender fingers came to grasp his shoulders. Mai sighs, and the sound fuels him on. Zuko is quick to leave kisses on her neck, tingles traveling through her body. Immaculate skin does wonders to him; and he kisses her more and more. She looks at him through half-closed eyes, and golden meets her. It is then that Mai is reminded of Zuko’s sister, the thought doing the same as a splash of ice-cold water.

“I don’t know how to tell you,” she starts but his lips don’t leave her. “It’s… it’s been some hard months.”

“That’s an understatement,” he laughs but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Zuko gives up; with a gentle caress to her cheeks, he leaves her be.

The thing with dating someone you’ve met –well—from your childhood is that you are so used to their quirks and manias that you know them as much as you know yourself. It is equally annoying and endearing. That’s why, after so long from being apart, it is pretty clear that he is studying her, trying to get what’s bothering her.

Sighing, Mai lowers her gaze. Words die in her throat, and it hurts that she needs to fish for them to give flesh to her thoughts. To dig in her mind is to feel things, and she is tired from feeling. This is Omashu all over again, trapped in her room with a storm in her head. Breathing is hard. This is Father’s strong eyes telling her to shut up, to disappear, to be gone, gone, gone. This is Mother’s iron fist, mother’s unreachable pride. She wants to run away. _She needs to!_ Except this is _Zuko_, and Zuko is different.

If she doesn’t talk this time, there might be consequences.

Mai remembers briefly the wide look on Azula’s eyes. The way she was holding herself when the letter came. She remembers her ugly laugh, like that of a ghost. How out of the blue it had been; how awful. Mai can still smell burnt paper, consumed by her friend’s fire – a fire that was consuming Azula as well. Suddenly she can’t keep the sobs she has heard from her room out of her mind, even if she wakes up and goes back at pretending that everything’s fine. That it was just a dream. That her friends are okay.

Everything isn’t fine, and everyone knows that, but they all can only wait and wish. Wait for something to happen. Wait for the beast to release itself. Wait for Azula, the perfect daughter, to bring herself to the depths of her shame and humiliation and break in perfect little pieces too broken to ever be fixed.

Mai is tired from waiting. She’s done enough of it to last her a lifetime.

“Mai, talk to me.” Zuko’s voice is desperate. He looked and looked but couldn’t find answers on her face. He, who wears his heart on his sleeve sometimes forgets that she can only wish to be like that.

For all the words she can’t pronounce, her hands speak. They touch his face, soft and sweet. “It’s your sister.”

He stiffs under her hand. “_Azula—”_

Mai shakes her head, her hands holding his. _‘I’m sorry’_, they say, _‘I know it hurts’_. _‘She hurts too’_. Looking into his eyes, it becomes clear that he knows. That he understands. That her storms reach him, too, and that as much as she’d like to chase away his ghosts, he won’t let her do it alone.

Mai sighs and goes on. “She’s been on the edge of a breakdown. I can tell something’s wrong. Really, _really_ wrong. She won’t tell us, but I know she’s not going to uni. And I know she’s… _she’s doing pretty bad, Zuko_.”

“Ha! _Perfect_ Azula? I doubt it.” His laugh is not a surprise. “Perhaps she’s just done pretending to care about you.”

“_Zuko_.”

He’s doing the thing where he blames Azula for the shitty things their father did; Mai should know, she’s seen Azula doing the same, and it leaves her mouth tasting blood.

“You can’t be this blind, can you?” His tone is as sharp as her knives, and she frowns. “Surely _you’ve_ noticed. Azula loves no one but herself. Well, maybe Father. But others? She just uses them. _She uses you_.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, and she tries to be calm even if it’s just for the sake of saving them an argument. Her fists curl at her sides, though.

Zuko’s eyes tell her the story she has tried to dismiss, the hurt and the pain, the anger that fills him. She looks at him, desperate to see a glimpse of the sweet person she knows he is, even as she knows that he’s right. That Azula has been an awful person. That she has thought of kicking her until she shuts up for ever. But to presume that he knows about them, about their friendship, about their bond… that’s just ridiculous.

So what if she’s trashy? They are, too. They don’t care about others because who the hell has cared about _them?_ Surely Zuko understands. Surely he can see that his sister wasn’t the one in the wrong, but their father. Surely Zuko no longer waits for that stupid man to love him! Surely, he doesn’t blame his sister for the man’s incapacity to love!

“I AM her brother, Mai! You’re just blind! Ty Lee and you? _You’re just her little toys_!”

It does the trick.

Her hand comes to his cheek fast, the sound silencing everything around them.

He blinks, but the fire does not leave his eyes.

“You think you know everything about me, but you don’t!”

_“I know what I -!”_

“_Stop_. Before you end this for real, _stop_.”

Her words hurt even more than her slap did. The ice in her voice harsher than any fire he has known. Zuko stares at her, recognizing in her fire more than just anger.

_She’s worried, and she’s hurting._

_“Mai…”_ he whispers, and his hand goes to his cheek. _‘Please talk to me,_’ his eyes plead. _‘Please let me in,_’ they scream. _‘Please don’t be hurting over someone who has caused you harm, who could hurt you’_.

“She’s your sister,” she says, and it’s taking all of her not to snap back, to keep her anger in touch. “I know she’s not the best out there. Believe me, _I do_. But she needs your help.”

Zuko remembers Ursa’s soft words. _“You two are siblings. If you don’t help each other, then who will?”_

“I can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, Mai.”

“She’s your sister,” she says, but she means _“this is your life,”_ _and “I loved you before, why did you have to go?”. _

“_Please_. Ty Lee and me have tried everything, but she’s pushing us back. We’re afraid she’ll_… do something_.”

Zuko pales at that.

“Like what?” he asks, and he is afraid he already knows the answer.

“Like kill herself.”

He laughs, because what else is there to do? Surely his sister couldn’t… _He’s known her for all her life_. He’s held her, ever since she was a baby. He remembers how happy he was to have a sister. He remembers the little girl that she was, the smiles that they shared, the games that they played. He remembers the nights with thunder and terrors, and the way they promised to chase them away when they grew older. He remembers what pain and fear look on her sister, and he can’t reconcile the image with the sister that stood by while Father pushed him away. He remembers –_how could he forget?—_the way she became more and more like _Him_. The days when she was the family’s pride. The girl that stood tall and was perfect in everything she did. He remembers the sister he thought he’d lost, the one he no longer knows. “She’s Azula, she wouldn’t--!”

He makes a gesture with his hands. He tries to act coolly, to think rationally. He wants to, but he remembers the scared little girl who’d cry whenever dad wasn’t affectionate to her. The little girl who would torment him, and who would go out of her way to protect him with pretty little lies that Father gave her as a gift.

“You don’t know that! You’ve been gone for five years! You weren’t there to see how your going left her. You weren’t there to see how much your mother’s leaving affected her either! Or your father’s imprisonment!”

“I’m sorry, but you know I wasn’t out there happily doing shit for these past five years! My father burned half my face and sent me away, my mother left _me_ as well!” He knows he’s not making sense, but he is _right_. Why should he put his own suffering aside in order to help someone who… someone who _laughed_ when fire licked his face? Zuko knows he’s trying to hold onto something, anything, to keep the images out of his mind. To not reconcile the little sister he loved with the sister whose words cut deep as knives.

“You had Iroh, though. She had no one.”

_“She had Father.”_

“You think that little shit_ ever_ cared for someone who wasn’t him?!” she says, and her voice carries fire. She’s past pretending she doesn’t care how much those siblings were hurt. How much it pains her see darkness in their eyes, barely hidden by hopeful tones.

She’s past pretending she doesn’t care about their stupid rivalry. That it was healthy competition. That these siblings weren’t fighting over their parent’s affection.

She’s past pretending that’s just how family is.

Her heart twists once she sees how her words seem to have the effect of a slap on Zuko’s face.

In that moment, Mai understands that she won’t ever let Ozai hurt someone she cares about again.

It doesn’t matter if they insist it is love. It doesn’t matter they still think that they deserved the abuse. She wants to scream that she loves him and that she would never, ever dare hurt him. That she would never, ever rejoice in his cries. That his father is a piece of shit. That he never deserved to have a son with a soul as beautiful as his.

“_Zuko, I know where you come from,”_ her voice softens, and her hands find their way to his face. Slender fingers caress his scar, and he closes his eyes. Mai’s lower lip trembles with the cries she doesn’t allow her lips to let out. _I won’t ever let anyone hurt you, _she doesn’t say, but her insides scream.

When she speaks again, her voice is like broken glass. “I know it hurts, and I wish I could take it from you. I wish… _I wish_ I could’ve protected you.”

“Mai, it wasn’t your fault,” his eyes are wide open, and he shakes his head.

“And it wasn’t yours, either,” she’s desperate, and she knows it, but it’s been enough. She’s had enough. “_It wasn’t yours, Zuko_.”

Zuko is crying now. His broken sob serves to sober Mai, and she’s quick to bring him closer. His arms hold her tight, tight as if she would ever leave. As if the thought could ever cross her mind. She holds him back, tight against her chest, tight, tight, tight, as if wanting to shield him from the world, from his past, from his pain.

“I couldn’t protect you from him, Zuko. And I couldn’t protect Azula, either. But I will protect you two from yourselves.”

He does not speak, but she knows he’s listening. His arms hold her tighter, and she caresses his hair with trembling hands and a full heart.

“Please, promise me you’ll try. Promise me you won’t give her your back.”

“I will see what I can do.”

She kisses him then, trying to send his pain away. Trying to erase the years spent in sorrow and fear. She kisses him, arms tight around her boyfriend. She kisses him as he cries, and her kisses offer the comfort her words cannot. She kisses him, and it’s enough.


End file.
